


This Air of Defeat

by Joanne_Barcia



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Character Death, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Tragedy, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_Barcia/pseuds/Joanne_Barcia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I realized that you never told me how Uncle Ollie died. And I feel like that's something I should know."<br/>Sara Diggle's got a question for her father.  (Future!fic, AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Air of Defeat

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure Dig's really out of character here, so some help would be nice.  
> Also: Trigger warning. I don't want to spoil it, so message me for more info.  
> Thanks, enjoy, and leave comments please!

"Dad?" the voice is quiet and pensive, taking him away from his book and bringing his attention to rest on the girl in front of him. He smiles.

"What's up, hun?" John Diggle starts, but upon seeing the knit of his daughter's eyebrows and the concerned set of her eyes, he changes his tone. "What's wrong?"

Nothing particularly immediate, nothing urgent, he finds. Instead, she finds her voice slowly and starts.

"I was just… I was just thinking…."

John scoots to the side, making room on the sofa for Sara to sit down and join him. Almost hesitantly, she does – and the two sit side by side, their legs pointing towards one another. The careful look on Sara's face remains the same.

"I was thinking. And I realized… that you never told me how Uncle Ollie died. And I feel like that's something I should know by now."

And even with the air practically knocked out of him, John still finds a way to let loose a shaky sigh. He thinks of Oliver Queen in that moment, brings his face up in his mind's eye; and with a dull ache in his chest, he does something that that stupid kid would most definitely do in a moment like this. He avoids the question.

"What made you think of that?"

The girl averts her eyes, almost shamefully, but she has no reason for it. She waits a moment and explains, "Thea. She keeps a bunch of his pictures in her apartment, just out in the open. There are some of him and her with their parents, some of just the two of them. And there are a couple of you and him, too. And then there was one of him carrying me on his back. I saw it when I visited her yesterday, and I was just thinking about it."

And John nods, wishing he had something more he could say to derail the conversation. It's one he certainly does not want to have – not now, not with Sara. He tries to be honest.

"Honey, I think this is a conversation we should have when you're older."

"Why, though?" she demands, a frustrated look on her face in spite of her quiet voice. "I don't understand why you couldn't just tell me how he died when –"

"Sara, you were eight years old."

* * *

_It is with the heaviest of hearts that he drags his feet into his daughter's room after knocking two times in the middle of the night. And he should have guessed that she'd still be awake, with her newest Harry Potter book perched in her lap. He knows without a doubt that she fully intends to read until the sun comes up._

_And for a moment, he considers just turning around and leaving her to her magic and witches and wizards and myths. He considers simply not telling her, making up an elaborate lie, but that won't change the truth. After a few long, deliberating moments in her doorway, he decides that there truly is no time like the present._

_He and Lyla walk in together and sit on her bed, with her in between them, and that alone is a bad sign to the eight year old girl who is just so used to the pleasant, active dynamic between her parents. But now, as her mother gently pulls the book from her lap, she decides that that entire demeanor is gone. It's been replaced by this air of defeat, the slouch of their shoulders._

" _Sara," her father says quietly, his voice raw. "Honey, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But your Uncle Oliver…"_

* * *

The look in his eyes is nearly pleading her to stop asking, but she doesn't pick up on it. Or if she does, she elects to ignore it and keep pushing.

"Well, I'm not eight now. And I think five years without knowing how he died is more than enough. Please, Dad, just – how?"

And he sighs again, filled with dread and uncertainty. He hears the sound of another person in the room and looks up to see Lyla, looking at him with similar worry, and he stares her way. She offers a halfhearted shrug.

"Well, you know I used to work with your Uncle Oliver. I don't think I ever told you what it was we did together, huh?"

She shakes her head, her curls moving delicately with her. He takes a deep breath and plunges right in.

"In school, did they ever tell you about the vigilante? The Arrow?"

* * *

_She's eight years old, and far too young for this. He thinks, even Thea was older than Sara when she lost her brother for the first time. The weight of it, he feels it now. And so, unfortunately, must Sara._

_The girl, having forgotten her book the second the words were spoken, just stares at her parents with wide, saucer eyes and tries to ignore what they just said. But she can't. None of them can._

" _What?" she asks, but she heard them perfectly clear. "No, no… no, Uncle Ollie can't be dead!"_

_Gentle tear tracks snake down her cheeks, and it takes a few long moments for the wrenching cries and high-pitched screams to follow._

_Lyla and John spend that night in their daughter's room, trying to calm both her and themselves._

* * *

"So Uncle Ollie was the Arrow," she says, plain and simple. "And you helped him? You both helped him?"

Her parents nod. But Sara doesn't particularly care that Oliver Queen was the vigilante. She never did; all Sara Diggle cared about when she was five years old was the fact that her uncle was the best hide-and-seek player in the family, and her favorite adult companion aside from her parents. When he wasn't with her, she didn't care where he was. Out in the city shooting arrows, or anywhere else, he just wasn't there to play with her. That was the only problem.

And after that one warm night when she was eight, he never played with her again. In children's terms, this was just one massive game of hide-and-seek, with him hiding just out of sight and her left to endlessly search after him. And she would never find him.

"So how did he die?"

* * *

_The funeral is a small affair, with only Oliver's closest friends around. His death is breaking news, of course, but anybody who didn't know the man personally was turned away._

_The result is a small group of mourners watching a plain casket be lowered into the ground, just beside his mother's._

_In the tiny crowd, John holds Sara's hand as tight as he can, as if his grip could stop her from crying her tiny heart out by his side._

* * *

"Sara, your Uncle Oliver died when he took a pistol and shot himself in the head. He killed himself."

And in the stunned silence that follows, John can't find a single word to say that will comfort the young teenager sitting beside him.

"I don't understand," she says finally. "Why? And if… if it was suicide, then what does it matter that he was the Arrow? If he didn't die from being the vigilante…."

"But he did," John replies with seriousness in his voice and a grave set to his shoulders. "He stopped being the Arrow when he was thirty two years old, but for three years after that he was left to try to get rid of the demons in his head. All the memories. But he couldn't do it."

A few stray tears fall down the girl's cheeks as she considers this, and her father, in spite of himself, continues.

"We tried to get him help. We did everything we could think of. But even with our help, even with a psychiatrist and therapy and medications, none of it was enough."

He looks at his daughter's miserable face and wonders if he should just shut up and leave it there and spare her the rest. But he ends up merely abbreviating.

"Thea panicked when he didn't come home one night. Woke everyone up, and we all went looking. We practically tore the city apart until we found him in the… underneath the nightclub. A good couple of hours after he did it."

He omits the fact that half of the man's head was blown off, but his face was still more or less intact. And John probably won't ever tell his daughter that Oliver Queen, with his eyes wide-open, frozen in death, looked more peaceful in that moment than ever before. That it was him who, holding his breath, reached out and closed the ex-vigilante's eyes with a single motion of his fingers.

That every day, he tries to forget the overwhelming emptiness that came when he rested a gentle hand on the man's chest and found it cold to the touch.

He could never tell her that.

With a soft, "Come here," he pulls her towards him and wraps his arms around her. Her breathing is tight, but she doesn't cry.

It was five years ago, after all.

"But he loved you, okay?" suddenly he pulls away and holds her shoulders firm as he tells her this. She shakily nods. "He loved you so much. More than the world. In fact, if you want my guess, you were one of the reasons he held on for so long."

"Then why did he leave us?" the question is quiet, raw, resolute. And he can't think of an answer for the longest time.

After a stretch of silence, he wills himself to speak.

"I don't know," he admits. "Some people… sometimes people have a hard time realizing that for all the love they give out, there are people loving them right back. And sometimes they just get tired of living with ghosts. I don't know."

No one says anything, so he, of course, continues.

"You know, I used to think a lot about it. I used to think that… that maybe if I paid a little more attention, he could still be here. If he just called me that night. You know, I'd have been there in a heartbeat, any time. But he didn't call me. And I've gone over it thousands of times in my head, and there wasn't anything he said or did that would have let me know he was going to do it. So there was nothing I could do. When it comes down to it… Oliver wanted to die, so he did."

A pause. He leans in towards Sara.

"And something about your Uncle Ollie – he was stubborn as all hell. All the time, I'm not kidding."

That earns him a soft, halfhearted giggle in spite of the circumstance. And another hug.

He repeats, "He loved you."

"Thanks," she says into his neck and pulls away. "I'm gonna… I'm just gonna go to my room now."

He nods, and away she goes. Lyla sits down in her place, and the two sit hand in hand, heads leaned towards each other, and just breathe and think.


End file.
